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September 20th, 2011 19:00

Aurora Wifi + Bluetooth issues

Hey guys hoping I can get some help here before I get grey hairs,

I recently (about 1 month ago) bought two Alienware Auroras for my cousin and myself. Got them both exactly the same specs except the wallpaper and FX colors but that's minor. Both were bought the same night and oddly mine shipped a week after, figured maybe they were getting more parts. Specs are:

Windows 7 Home premium 64bit
Intel Core i5-2500K (6MB Cache) Overclocked Turbo Boost to 3.8GHz
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz
1TB HD
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560
802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR USB Combo Adapter

About 2 days after I received mine, the Wi-Fi just stopped working. I heard it make the hardware plug-in/plug-out sound and that is all. It uses Ralink Wireless Utility to control the wi-fi and when I hover over the icon on the bottom right of my taskbar it is black and says "Ralink wireless LAN card not exist". I tried opening the computer up to see if there was anything loose but everything seemed in order. I also tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the drivers, but no luck. Finally decided to give tech support a call.

Talked to a service tech on the phone and he remotely controlled my machine and checked it out. He also tried installing drivers and such, but was unable to fix the issue. He didn't understand that the wi-fi + bt card was integrated into the I/O board. He then decided to send out a tech to my house to replace the wifi card (which was the I/O board). Service tech came replaced the part, checked my computer, but still would not recognize it.

I called tech support once again and this other agent followed basically the same steps. He also ordered a replacement part which, once the tech came to my house, ended up being the same part. Replaced it, still did not work, but this time my system went all crazy. Two USB 2.0 ports in the back stopped working, both of my USB 3.0 ports worked but once I plugged something into them, made the system very sluggish. So the service tech said he would call tech support up and let them know that he thought it may be a bad motherboard that was conflicting with everything.

I got a call from tech support and they told me that they would send yet another tech to my house to replace my motherboard and the I/O board. Service tech came and replaced the parts, and booted the system up. After this I almost wanted to cry... The system started up slower than my old windows 98 sitting in my garage and continued to crawl while in BIOS and on my desktop, my alien fx lighting did not work at all, some USB ports were still not working, no Wi-Fi working or even recognized, and the service tech had a face like "What the?"

I had enough, called support again and told them that I had my computer for two days and it was dying faster than we could replace parts on it. I told them I didn't want to rebuild the system and I wanted a replacement. Good news I got a replacement within a week.

Have had this new one for four days and my wi-fi just did the same thing to me again...everything else is still working, but it all started with the wi-fi...

The other exact same system that my cousin is using is working perfectly fine running on wi-fi and he has had no issues at all. We are running practically the same programs. I haven't even had enough time to install most of the programs I use and this is already happening again.

Anyone have similar issues and know how to solve them without rebuilding this thing or will I be forced to go through the pain of techs messing around inside it until they find a fix for it?

Sorry for the wall of text, just hoping someone can shine some light to this issue that is going to drive me insane please.

Chris.

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